I was honestly lost in life. I did terrible in high school. I wasn't doing well in college. I didn't know what I was going to do. My dad had a seizure. The ambulance and fire department showed up. I remember telling the firefighters that there was a mistake; We had asked for the ambulance. Like a week or two later, my grandma was showing me a brochure with a bunch of tech classes. She wanted me to sign up for EKG Tech, but I saw EMT on the same page. I was like no way, I can take this class and work on the ambulance? The requirement was Emergency Response first so I took that, liked it, and just progressed from there.
It's different where you work. A lot of people don't realize that there are different types of ambulances. There are ambulances that primarily do interfacility transfers (IFT), which is usually non emegent transfer from one facility to another. An example is taking someone from a convalescent home to their dailysis appointment. They might have dementia and COPD and cannot self regulate their oxygen. Maybe they had a prior stroke and cannot hold themselves up in a chair. It's usually mind numbing boring and one of the less exciting aspects of the job.
There will be ambulances that only do 911. People don't realize that most 911 calls aren't really emergencies. People will call 911 for almost anything. You deal with a lot of drunks, homeless, or minor complaints (eg leg pain x1 week). Every once in awhile, you'll get an acute stroke or cardiac arrest to shake things up.
A lot of places do a combination of 911 and IFT.
Ambulances could be different levels. There is basic (BLS), intermediate (ILS), and advance (ALS), and critical care (CCT). Sometimes all the ambulances are ALS so they respond to basic and advance calls. That's how most systems I worked in were. Sometimes they do a tieed response were the BLS units will go to calls that sound not so crazy (eg leg pain, psych, drunk) and ALS will go to more likely critical calls (eg chest pain, cardiac arrest, shortness of breath). Critical care most often does IFT or flight, but they can get very sick patients on ventilators, bunch of drips, ECMO, balloon pumps, Impella, etc.
Anyways, I started off on BLS IFT. It was simple and slow. Pay was low. I liked it, but it was mind numbing. I then went on to be an EMT on CCT, which meant I just drove the nurse around. Calls were more exciting, but I was just a driver and gurney pusher pretty much. I did 911 ALS (all ALS system) as an EMT for a year. Again, mostly drove. The fun started when I became a paramedic (after like 5 years in EMS?). Ran a bunch of easy peasy calls (eg leg pain, anxiety, diarrhea) with critical calls like once every couple of weeks or even less frequent. I worked in an urban area so I was very busy. Sometimes I worked in a slow area on a quick response vehicle (QRV), which was fun. After 5 years of that, I went onto flight. Usually slow. Calls I feel like are about the same, but sometimes I get good scene or CCT calls.
I love flying, lol. Most challenging thing is that now I work with a nurse as my partner, I don't feel like there is a clear leader among the two of us. We are a team. You really have to learn to speak up, but at the same time, also learn not to be such a control freak. On the ambulance, it was my show and I got to do what I want. Now we both have to agree on what to do. I had minda the similar thing on the ambulance dealing with firefighter/paramedics, but once the patient was in my ambulance and the firefighter was gone, I had the freedom to do whatever. Not the case working with a flight nurse.
During the peak of the pandemic, we just had to check temperatures and fill out forms when clock into work. We had to fill out additional forms when we had COVID 19 patients. They came up with a complicated way to strongly encourage patients not to go to the hospital called "assess and release", which sounded like a common thing throughout the country. I called it "an AMA extra steps"; totally a Rick and Morty reference. AMA = against medical advice where a patient chose to stay home or self transport without an ambulance. I beyond hated all the PPE we had to wear. Patients always said the magic word that made it so we had to wear PPE. You'd get a patient who looks fine, practically doing kart wheels to the ambulances, and they'd say they had shortness of breath, coughing, body aches, nausea, diarrhea, everything... I felt like a lot of people wanted to spice up how sick they were and it created a butt load more work for us. Ugh. COVID 19 definitely made working on the ambulance a lot less comfortable and created a ton of paperwork for me.
Working a lot in flight, I am thinking about nursing school. A lot of us are dual certified as nurse and medic. I signed up for college, but put a halt on that plan when my base closed. I just started working as a traveler, enjoying that, and looking at school again now things are starting to get more stable for me. I am not sure if I'll go the nurse route or even go beyond like PA or something. I kinda feel like for me nursing is aiming too low. I want to do more. At the flight level, at least outside of California, there isn't much difference between a flight nurse and medic I think, so going to nursing school I feel like would only add extra letters after my name, maybe a small pay increase, I can pickup more shifts, but that's it. Doesn't seem like a lot of bang for buck I feel.
Show up on time for your shifts. Show up ready. Wear your uniform properly. Don't swear or be rude to people. Be honest about what you can do and your documentation. Do the best that you can do. Be nice.
Be nice. Have fun. Be open to learning; Don't limit yourself. A lot of people will be like "I'm an EMT so I don't have to learn that." I don't like that. This job is hard sometimes, tiring, and we don't need mean people in this job. I hate working with mean people. I feel bad for patients that get mean medics.
Honestly, I don't see this job changing much. It is difficult for change to happen. It's slow. I've been in EMS I think for like 11 years now? Doesn't seem like it has changed a lot.
